The Ghost Ship Mary Celeste

While wasting my time on the internet a while back, I stumbled upon a very strange story; that of the Ghost Ship Mary Celeste. I don't know too much about maritime lore, but this story is apparently very famous, because it's both very bizarre and seems to have no real explanation. Modern day researchers have been able to come up with an answer to what happened to the Mary Celeste, but even their most plausible explanations don't make this story any more normal.

From the time she was built in 1861, the ship seems to have been cursed. Originally, she was named the Amazon, and her first captain died of pneumonia at the beginning of her maiden voyage. Her next captain struck a fishing boat while at sea, and had to return to the shipyard for repairs, where a sudden fire broke out on deck.

The famous story of the Mary Celeste doesn't start until November, 1872, when she was under the command of Captain Briggs. Briggs was docked in New York, waiting for a shipment on 1700 barrels of raw alcohol, which he was commissioned to carry across the ocean to Italy. Captain Briggs met up with a friend of his, Captain Morehouse, and they discovered that they'd both be sailing into the Mediterranean, though when it was time for Briggs to leave, Morehouse's cargo still hadn't arrived, and he ended up setting sail seven days later.

Captain Briggs

About a month into Morehouse's voyage, the helmsman of his ship spotted another ship off in the distance, some 600 miles west of Portugal. The other ship, recognized by Morehouse as the Mary Celeste, was yawing, and her sails were loose and slightly torn. After circling her for some time and seeing nobody on deck, Morehouse decided to board her to investigate.

The chief mate, who boarded the Mary Celeste, reported that no one was on board. There was more water below deck than there should have been, and though the Mary Celeste was not sinking, everything was wet. Several pieces of navigational equipment were missing, two of the ship hatches were wide open, the lifeboat was missing, and a rope was found tied to the ship and trailing behind it in the water (it's believed to be the rope used to tie the main sail, as that rope was missing).

The Mary Celeste wasn't the only ship ever to be found abandoned in the sea. What makes this story unique, however, is the fact that no personal possessions were missing, and there was still a six-month supply of food. There was no sign of a struggle, and the 1700 barrels of alcohol were also untouched, making the piracy raid theory (otherwise the most obvious explanation) highly unlikely.

Morehouse sees the Mary Celeste - though there were no stormy seas at the time.

Captain Morehouse and his first mate sailed the two ships to an overseas British territory at the mouth of the Mediterranean, known as Gibraltar, where an official inquiry was done. At the time, they wrote it off as either a pirate raid or a mutiny (neither of which are very plausible), and focused on insurance problems. During the inquiry, they found nine of the barrels of alcohol empty, though they hadn't been tampered with, and a British surveyor found what he thought was dried blood, though an American consult proved that it was, in fact, rust.

No one at the time was able to prove what had really happened aboard the Mary Celeste, and even now all we have are some highly probable speculations. For the longest time, people thought a Seaquake had freaked out Captain Briggs, causing him to abandon ship, but that seems less likely, since Captain Briggs was known for being an experienced sailor who was familiar with strong weather and wouldn't abandon his ship unless he feared for his life.

What everyone now believes really happened is even stranger than a pirate raid or a seaquake - it was a phantom explosion.

Not exactly.

The nine barrels found empty in the cargo hold were actually made from a different type of wood, known for being extra porous. It wasn't liquid alcohol that was poured out, then, but the alcohol fumes that leeched through the wood and built up in the watertight hull.

After all that vapor filled up, it would be a simple matter for something to spark and light it (I'm thinking the metal straps on the barrels rubbing together). The resulting explosion would have been so powerful, it would have blown open the cargo hatch, damaged much of the interior of the ship (including the water pumps), and blown open the two hatches on the deck - without burning or singeing anything.

A scientist at the University College of London recreated the phantom explosion that would have occurred on the Mary Celeste. Dr. Sella, the chemist who recreated the blast, says he created what's called a pressure wave explosion, a wave of flame that passed over without burning anything, and leaving relatively cool air behind.

Dr. Sella's recreation, which used paper instead of wooden barrels.

As I said before, Captain Briggs was an experienced sailor who wouldn't abandon his ship unless his life was in danger. This pressure wave explosion, passing right over him and leaving him miraculously alive, would have been enough for anyone to throw their hands up and say "Forget this!" The entire crew probably piled into the lifeboat together, totally ignoring their food supply and everything else on board in a frenzied attempt to get away from the cursed ship which, basically, had just tried to kill them.

On a side note, the Mary Celeste continued to haunt its owners even after it was found, abandoned, in the Atlantic. The father of then owner James Winchester sailed the Mary Celeste back to Boston, where he drowned in a freak accident. The ship changed hands 17 times in the next 13 years, and the last guy to own her finally decided to deliberately sink her in an act of insurance fraud. His plan didn't work, as the Mary Celeste ran into a reef off the coast of Haiti and sat there, upright and in the sun. He tried to burn her, but the vessel remained intact. The insurance company investigated and figured out what he was doing, but the man died under unknown circumstances before his trial, and the ship sat there for years before eventually sinking into the bay (later to be found by Clive Cussler).

Though we can't know for certain what exactly happened aboard the Mary Celeste, the facts all seem to point to a very strange case on high seas, and I can't say I blame Captain Briggs for never wanting to step foot on the ship again, even as he and his crew floated out on the ocean with no supplies, dying, with the Mary Celeste still in sight.